


Variables

by jtrobot



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Tower, Character Study, Gen, Post-Avengers (2012), bruce just wants a friend and a good night's sleep, but also with plot I promise, is not a good place for a couple of shield agents with cabin fever
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2015-03-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 18:15:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1992870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jtrobot/pseuds/jtrobot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There aren't many things that Natasha Romanov is afraid of. When one of those things, however, is her new teammate, and her best friend is no longer talking to her, life gets...complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

            It wasn't odd for Natasha to wake up in the middle of the night; she had always been a light sleeper—by nature or by nurture, she wasn't sure—so she didn’t think too much of it as she remained still and cracked open her eyes, routinely scanning the room briefly before allowing herself to return to sleep. However, as soon as she had deemed everything safe, she heard a noise, the same one her subconscious recognized to be what had woken her up in the first place. Her eyes shot open again and she instinctively grabbed the comfortingly cold silenced pistol she always kept beneath her pillow. But that sound…it wasn’t one of combat. It sounded like—there it was again. Like a cry of pain. A very human, very defenseless noise.

            Natasha slowly sat up, letting go of the firearm and brushing her hair back from her face. The room was quite dark but she blinked quickly to adjust to what little light she had to work with, though she was not surprised to see her immediate surroundings unchanged. There was another wail (was it louder this time?), only slightly muffled. One of the first things the new occupants of Avenger Tower noticed upon moving in was that the walls were paper-thin. Natasha always assumed it had been built that way to prevent anyone from ever sneaking up on Stark, and was never able to decide whether that was cowardice or genius, or a little of both. Regardless of her feelings on the matter, it allowed her to exactly pinpoint the origin of the sound to the floor directly below her. A rare jolt of fear shot down her spine when she made the connection and realized that _the floor directly below her_ meant Banner’s room. She decided to take up her pistol again, after all.

            A stray thought crossed her mind to wake Clint but she shook it away almost immediately, feeling foolish. Here she was, SHIELD’s top operative, tempted to call in for backup because she was spooked by somebody else’s nightmare. Embarrassed enough by her paralyzing fear to shake it off, she stood, her bare feet noiselessly hitting the hardwood floor, and grabbed a loose-knit sweater; more to give her a means for hiding her weapon in a pocket than to ward off the chill of the early hours of the morning.

            As she headed for the staircase, Natasha couldn’t help but find herself getting distracted, every bone in her body aching that just this once, she wouldn’t investigate. It was difficult to ignore, given that her instincts had a damn good track record with this sort of thing, but she pushed on anyway, fueled by her irritation at having allowed so much senseless fear to poison her body. She had never been afraid before, not like this—and certainly not by any one person.

            Natasha’s greatest ally had always been logic. Emotions got in the way, friends let you down, but facts would always be facts. Trouble only occurred when there weren’t enough facts to go around, leaving behind a big, black void of doubt and uncertainty.

            One of the first things Natasha had learned in her line of work was that fear is nothing but an awareness of ignorance, and ignorance is the unease born of too many variables and not enough data. It was why she preferred hand-to-hand combat to anything else; there were no variables. No worrying if she had enough bullets left, or if the wind was blowing just right, or if she’d even have enough time to reload during battle. No chance she’d reach behind her shoulder and find her quiver empty.

            Instead, she was always in full control of her own body, knew exactly what she was capable of. There was never any fear going into a mission because—well, she knew exactly whether she would come out alive or not. And so far, it’s never been the latter.

            But since being assigned to the Avengers Initiative, certainty seemed to become less of an absolute and more of a luxury. Not because of the missions—no, power-hungry men will always be the same, even if they’re from another world, and aliens have the same tactics of hiding behind their guns as those of clumsy, God-fearing terrorists. It wasn’t that Natasha couldn’t wrap her mind around strange, new enemies. It was that she never before had variables for teammates. Or rather, teammate.

            Though Natasha’s first official mission with the Avengers was to recover the Tessaract, it only came after she had assigned herself a more important one first. She had to know her teammates; know who was trustworthy, who was reliable, who could keep the calmest in the midst of battle. And for the most part, it wasn’t a difficult project. Thor was the easiest to figure out—he always said whatever was on his mind at the time. Whenever he was upset, he’d start shouting and breaking things, and whenever he was happy, well, he’d smile, and then start shouting and breaking things. He had a directness that Natasha couldn’t help but appreciate, forged from an alien attitude towards the human art of pretense. Steve was a little trickier, mostly because it was a struggle for her to overcome her innate cynicism to realize that he _could_ , in fact, be taken at face value, that his motives _were_ always straightforward and good. Cap was a no-bullshit kind of a guy, predictable in the absolute best sense of the word. As for Tony; once Natasha allowed herself to accept that they had more in common than she would have liked to believe, he was virtually transparent. Clint was, well, Clint. He might as well have been an extension of Natasha herself.

            Banner was a variable. His entire existence was built upon an ability to be completely and utterly unreadable, and any attempt at removing the mask was quite literally countered by the rage of an unbeatable monster. It was a perfectly untouchable defense. So not only did Natasha not know what to expect from the man, but she also had absolutely no way of ever finding it out. Contrary to popular belief, that was what her fear was borne out of—the unknown. The fact that this particular unknown had the ability to rip her limb from limb at indeterminate intervals like shredding paper was just additional terror. Almost a moot point, in the long run.

            Therefore, it was with more hesitancy than she was used to that Natasha opened the door to Banner’s room, the foreign feeling of doubt flooding her system and leaving her wondering if she wouldn’t have been better off staying in bed. She knew it was childish, but control of her mind alone couldn’t keep her pulse from racing.

            The room wasn’t dark as expected, but lit with the muted warm glow of a small table lamp that stood beside Banner’s bed. Along the wall stood a polished wooden closet, modest in size—or, at least, as modest as Stark must have allowed—and a desk was lined up beneath a large window, covered with very little clutter. The entire living space, in fact, was incredibly neat, aside from a paperback book lying carelessly on the floor at the side of the bed. Judging by the table lamp, Banner must’ve fallen asleep reading it. The final thing she noticed was that it was now completely silent.

            Natasha quickly weighed her options. None would get her out of there cleanly.

            “It’s Romanov,” she said, as softly as she could.

            “What’s going on?” Banner asked, just as softly, but with his eyes still closed.

            “Sorry for waking you.” He opened them.

            “What’s going on?” he asked again, looking her not accusingly, but wary of whatever menace she had come to him to help with. Well, now she felt stupid.

            “I—nothing.” He waited for her to say more, and she imagined standing there until he fell back asleep and she could slip away. “I was patrolling,” she explained. “It’s a habit I picked up at the agency. I didn’t think I’d wake you.”

            “It’s alright,” he said, smiling tiredly and adjusted into a more upright position “I’m a light sleeper.” He glanced around searchingly and Natasha stepped forward, grabbing the book that had fallen and handed it to him.

            “What were you reading?” she asked politely as he took it and nodded in thanks.

            “Oh,” he said, as though the last thing in the world he was expecting to be asked about was his choice of bedside material. He handed it back to Natasha, who sat lightly on the edge of the bedside table. “Just some Vonnegut, I guess.” Natasha gave the cover a cursory glance then flipped through the pages, pausing and smiling faintly whenever she came across one of the crude authorial sketches between the blocks of text. She never had much of a fondness for reading but could appreciate those who did. She was just about to give it back and be on her way when Banner spoke first.

“Why did you really come down here?” he said, his voice still rusty from sleep but still laced with the underlying accusation that they were both aware of.

            “I wanted to make sure you were okay,” Natasha answered quietly. Bruce smiled at this, and met her eyes. It took all of her willpower not to look away.

            “You’re a good liar, Ms. Romanoff,” he commented with dark bemusement.

            “It’s my job,” she responded, quick enough, hopefully, to keep him from seeing that she was taken aback by being called out so bluntly.

            “Glad you're on my side, then.” He shot her another glance, as if to dare her to avoid the pointedness of the comment. Natasha, constantly evaluating and re-evaluating her environment, couldn't help but marvel at how formidable Banner must have been, before the Hulk was even a mix of chemicals in a test tube. There was no danger here, in this quiet room with this quiet man, and yet she had already been cornered into revealing the truth simply by the applied pressure of silence.

            “I don’t know why. Because I was afraid.” Because she always had a way of pushing herself. To drive out all fear, all uncertainty in a situation, because fear was a weakness, and anyone saying otherwise didn’t know what fear can do to a person. “When you were sleeping, you sounded...upset. You woke me up.” She didn't let her eyes leave his, and she watched them close as he rested his head against the wall.

            “I should have left as soon as all this ended.” To anyone less observant, this would have seemed a non-sequitur.

            “If you had left, nobody would have been around to stop you.”

            “What, just now?” A bit of an edge, now, in his voice. Natasha almost felt a touch of shame for coming across as condescending. She bowed her head, just slightly, in affirmation and apology. He noticed, and sighed, perhaps to apologize as well. There was no need for either of them to be defensive. “Look, I don't know you,” he continued, sounding more natural now with this truce between them, “and you don't know me. It's three in the morning, and we're both still recovering from fighting off a goddamn alien invasion. I don't mean to be rude, Ms. Romanoff, but this—this right here--” he gestured around him, at the bedside lamp and at the book on the floor and at himself—“this is not a case. It's not an _assignment_. This isn't a code to be cracked; it's my life. So please, whatever you were trying to accomplish by being here, understand there's no solution.” Banner said all this with his eyes half-closed, his head still resting against the wall as though he were a professor, running through tomorrow's lecture in his head. And what his voice lacked in volume, his words made up for in truth, and they coursed through Natasha like a jolt of electric, icy water. She felt her eyes widen involuntarily and sat up straighter, even though she already had perfect posture. He was right. Of course he was right. She stood up, careful to keep her pistol concealed and fought away a blush of embarrassment at the thought of him seeing that she had brought it.

            “Goodnight, Doctor,” she said curtly, and left the room as quickly as she could without making it seem like she was running away. Because, of course, that was exactly what she was doing.

 ~

That night occupied her thoughts for a majority of the subsequent week, and she only grew more and more frustrated with herself for being so entangled in this, the mess she had created within her own mind, this mess that meant _nothing_ , really. Hell, Banner had probably already forgotten about it. She was not a computer, but the minute an encounter came along that didn't fit in her programming, she found herself tearing at her coding to find the correct protocol to execute. How was she to win a battle that didn't exist? How could she just leave it alone? It was one thing to accept fear, but it was quite another to be afraid of it.

            These were her musings on a sunny, dusty Tuesday morning, as she looked blankly through a cupboard in the small fourth floor kitchen she had come to frequent. It contained a little table that faced a wall of glass, such that the room overlooked the street. It was just high enough in the tower for an onlooker such as Natasha not to be seen, but close enough to the ground for her to make out the faces of people walking by.

            “Morning,” came a gruff voice from the hallway.

            “Clint,” she acknowledged, giving him a brief half-smile as he walked in and went immediately to the coffee pot. “You're up early.”

            “You're up late,” he said, glancing at the clock on the wall. It was nearly ten. How had she not noticed?

            “Couldn't sleep.”

            “ _Do_ you sleep?”

            “Shut up.”

            “Will do,” Clint responded, shaking his head at her as he grabbed a carton of milk from the fridge. Natasha watched him for a moment.

            “Do you remember when we first met?” she asked him, smirking slightly as if to acknowledge the oddness of the question, as they both knew that she wasn't one for reminiscing. “Properly. At SHIELD.” Clint gave her a look before pulling up a chair at the table and idly beginning to skim through yesterday's paper.

            “You mean when we fucked over an office desk for the sake of the US government?”

            “You've always had such a way with words,” she affirmed, dryly as she poured herself a bowl of cereal. “I wanted to...for lack of a better term, I needed to size you up.” She shot a glance at Clint, who seemed to be very focused on drinking his coffee and not voicing whatever was going through his head. “Everyone I've had to work with, I need to be able to...”

            “Trust?” Clint supplied, putting his paper down as Natasha joined him at the table.

            “Not trust. _Understand.”_ She stared at her cereal for at least fifteen seconds before realizing she had forgotten to grab a spoon. Clint sighed and downed the rest of his coffee before getting up to get one for her.

            “What's on your mind, Tasha?”

            “Banner.” She couldn't pretend to miss the way Clint avoided her gaze as he gave her a spoon when he sat back down, slowly.

            “Is this about what happened on the Helicarrier?” he asked.

            “You don't know what happened on the Helicarrier,” she replied in a tone that would have seemed polite, to someone who didn't know her. To someone who's not Clint. He raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. “It's not about that. It _is,_ but it's not. I just—I don't know what to think about him.”

            “Then don't.” Clint stood up again, but this time to leave.

_“_ Clint, _wait_ , dammit--” she called, getting up hurriedly and catching him in the hallway.

            “Tash, how long has it been since the battle?” he asked her, and of course this conversation was going to happen, but she didn't want it to happen _right now_.

            “Thirteen days.”

            “And have you once asked me how _I'm_ doing?” He didn't seem angry, just...resigned, and the way he was looking at her made it hard for her to think of an alternative to the word 'avoiding' when answering his question.

            “I've been distracted, Clint, we all have.”

            “You don't _get_ distracted, Tasha.”

            “Now, I,” she stopped to glance down the end of the hall; empty, as usual, “I have been. I'm trying to work through some things, and as soon as I've--”

            “And I'd love to help you, but it's a two-way street. Don't talk to me about Banner until I stop seeing guards in Stuttgart every time I shoot a fucking arrow.” And with that he was gone.

            She hesitated for only a moment, considering the outcome of following him when he clearly didn’t want her around, but when her phone buzzed she checked it mechanically; it was from Fury. An assignment briefing. She ducked back into the kitchen, determining that she had just enough time to finish her cereal before running to the conference room, but upon realizing her meal was waterlogged and her stomach unsettled, decided to make a cup of tea to go instead.

~

            Ten minutes later Natasha entered the room to the sound of cursing and muted banging and, under normal conditions, would have mercilessly mocked Clint for his inability to get the projector working for a Skype call.

“I can never get these damn things figured out, I swear to—“

“Lens cap,” Natasha said, unable to resist a slight air of smugness as she put her laptop bag on the table, unscrewed the cap and let the projection shine through to the wall of the room.

“Since when has there been a _lens cap_ ,” Clint grumbled, and threw himself back into his chair, clicking a pen in his hand. Natasha sat across from him and the monitor flashed with an incoming call before the silence could grow to uncomfortable proportions, to the relief of both occupants.

“Morning, Director,” Nat spoke as soon as Fury’s image filled the room. Normally it was uncommon for the SHIELD director to conduct a virtual meeting for mission briefs, but with headquarters leveled and the helicarrier severely damaged, Fury had his hands full with the type of managerial work he’d typically dump on the desk of somebody at one of the aforementioned locations. Maybe it was hypocritical that he considered paying a visit to the place he had stationed his two best agents an unnecessary stressor, but Nat and Clint certainly knew better than to point that out.

“Agents,” he acknowledged, business as usual, nodding at them from in front of a neutral wall. “Time to get you back on duty. I’m sending a new mission brief to you both right now; I don’t have time to walk you through it but it’s nothing if not straightforward.” Natasha glanced at her laptop screen and a new message pinged in the corner as she heard Clint’s phone sound. “Nothing too time-intensive, either, so I expect you to read everything. Do your research kids,” Fury added, his tone shifting into something more conversational as he kneaded his forehead. “I’ve been ass-deep in bureaucracy for a week so I’d like to inform you that this is a _very_ good time to do your job by-the-book.”

“Yes sir,” Clint said, leaning back in his chair. Natasha opened the file she had been sent, skipping to the end to check the bolded number at the bottom of the page that would mark the expiration of the file. It read _two_ ; ie, two hours until all electronic records of the mission would disappear into the ether. She idly wondered if Stark Tower had a printer, or if Tony even knew what paper was.

“Sir,” she said, looking up once she realize Fury was pointedly waiting for her to answer him.

“Good,” he replied. He looked to something at his right, to somebody behind the screen telling him something. “Of course,” he told them, then returned his attention the camera. “No time for questions today. Reconvene on Thursday to go over the details,” he concluded, and the connection cut off before he finished his last word, leaving a feeling of incompleteness behind. Clint, who was now leaning farther back in his chair than was safe, blew out a breath and clicked his pen.

“Does Stark even _have_ a printer?” he asked Nat, who had to laugh. Nice to know that even when he hated her, they thought the same thoughts.

“Guess we’ll have to ask Jarvis,” she said, trying to recall the last time she even saw Tony. He was always in his lab, which was, to the best of her knowledge, off-limits to everybody except for Banner. It occurred to her in that moment that maybe she should be concerned with this behavior, but then Clint left the room without another word and she didn’t need another mission, certainly not now.


	2. Chapter 2

        Natasha had been hoping Fury would stick around after the meeting; ideally, he would be in New York, but even a one-on-one over a video call would have been immeasurably helpful, to ask him all the things she needed to know. There was a time and place for being elusive, but she felt alienated; ever since the battle, it was as if all the furniture in the house she was living in all her life had shifted by three inches; what was once steady and solid was gone, and the decisions she was making were without resolve, and random, and unconvincing. When Fury collected her and Clint, and told them they were to stay in Stark Tower, she didn’t ask how long. When he pulled her aside as Clint left the room and told her to simply ‘watch him’, she didn’t ask why. And now, with a shiny new SHIELD mission in hand, the question of whether this changed anything was to sit stagnant in her throat. At least, until Thursday.  
She swallowed these thoughts away as she approached the bank of elevators outside the meeting room, where Clint was loitering. He didn’t turn to acknowledge her, but the way he stiffened slightly revealed enough to show he had been counting on catching a lift before she caught up with him.  
        “Looks like we’re gonna get some fresh air on this one,” he said, once she and reached the lobby and there was still no sign of a car.  
        “Out of the city?”  
        “Out of the country,” he replied, and she raised her eyebrows. At the risk of looking a gift horse in the mouth, it was odd for them to be sent out of the state, these days anyway, when SHIELD had perfectly competent agents across the globe. Maybe this was Fury’s way of apologizing. There was a ding, and Clint and Nat both shifted unconsciously away from the door.  
        “Oh. Hello,” came from the elevator as it opened. Of course, Natasha thought as she smiled politely, in a tower forty stories high, despite her statistical odds of never running into anyone for at least three weeks, now the two people she most wanted to avoid were in the same damn elevator lobby.  
        “Dr. Banner,” she responded, and forced herself to glance at Clint. He rolled his eyes, refusing to use any of the super spy training he had to not be an asshole in front of people, and ducked past Banner into the elevator, hitting the close button and disappearing after giving its previous occupant just enough time to step into the hall. Banner looked behind him curiously.  
        “I still have your book, from the other night,” Natasha continued, drawing Banner’s attention back to her before realizing that was the opposite of what she wanted. He stared at her blankly for a moment before his eyes lit up.  
        “Oh—the Vonnegut,” he recalled. “You know what, why don’t you hold on to it? You might like it.”  
        “I, um—really, it’s right upstairs, I could—“  
        “It’s no problem,” he pushed, and there was real warmth in his smile, a truce in his eyes.  
        “Alright, then. Thank you.” She pushed the elevator button and stepped back to wait, but he hadn’t left yet.  
        “Although—could you do me a favor in return?” he added, and Nat froze instinctively. Really, thirty flights of stairs is basically nothing. She had time to make a run for it. But he was still watching her expectantly, and this was not a mission, not a mission.  
        “What do you need?” she asked, calmly, and idly wondering why Stark hadn’t built faster elevator cars.  
        “Do you know anything about hacking into a wireless network?” he asked, blurting the words out all at once and wringing his hands together. “It’s nothing bad, it’s just that, well, it’s kind of a convoluted thing.” The elevator dinged and the doors slid open, blessedly empty. The noise made Bruce jump and look behind him as if he’d forgotten where he was. Natasha crossed her arms and smiled as she leaned against the opposite wall.  
        “I’m listening,” she said as the doors closed with a mechanical sigh of disappointment. Bruce’s smile grew, though he continued to fidget as he talked.  
        “Well, Tony and I get to talking, sometimes, in the lab, you know, just shooting the shit, and we, uh, he made me a bet,” Bruce eyed the elevators again, suspiciously, and began to walk down the hall, turning back to ensure Natasha was following him. She was. “He thought I wouldn’t be able to figure out the exact number of tech conferences he spoke at while hopelessly drunk, in 2009. He said the year was very important,” he finished. This was a much different man than the one she had last talked to. Maybe there were more sides to him than just the two everyone already knew about.  
        “Ok, you should not make bets with Stark,” she laughed, letting herself relax a little in the company of this oddly amiable Banner.  
        “I know, I know, but it seemed doable. At least, until I realized he had blocked me out of his wireless network.”  
        “I see now,” Natasha said, nodding, possible solutions already being calculated and tossed aside. “You can’t look up the videos. Why not just leave the Tower?”  
        “Jarvis won’t let me,” Bruce shook his head. “He’s very insistent, for an AI.”  
        “Oh dear.” Bruce shrugged helplessly and Natasha felt a small rush of self-affirmation as she settled on a solution. “I have an idea. But first, I’m going to need to you help me find a printer.”

        Banner fell silent after he had led Nat to acquire a hard copy of her mission briefing, and fearing the return of tense air between them, Natasha began to talk almost mindlessly as they reached their destination.  
        “What happens if you lose the bet?” she asked over her shoulder as Bruce trailed behind her into a small lounge.  
        “Oh, loser is on sandwich duty for a month.”  
        “Sandwich duty?”  
        Natasha hurried ahead and set her laptop onto one of a set of three coffee tables while Banner took in his surroundings, namely, a plush room of pillows and couches, painted shades of deep red maybe a little on the kitschy side, but not unbearably so. As far as the visitors to Stark Tower were concerned, this was one of the less frequently visited areas, tucked away on a floor mostly used for catching an elevator to somewhere else. For an agent who made a hobby out of memorizing floor plans, it was an ideal place to work, nap, relax—nearly anything that could best be accomplished without being bothered.  
        “Yeah, when Tony and I are working, and we have a pretty good project to put together, sometimes lunch, uh, just gets in the way,” Bruce elaborated, quirking a smile as he wandered to the back of the room, looking around. “So essentially if I lose the bet I have to deliver lunch to Tony every day we’re working together for all of June. What’s the plan, anyway?” he asked as he inspected a mini-fridge hidden beneath a splashy set of paintings.  
        “Well, I’m certainly not bad at hacking,” Natasha started, smirking, “but I doubt I could get through Stark’s security. Especially if he’s actively trying to keep you out. But, he hasn’t blocked me out. So we use my computer. Occam’s razor. No delivery gigs.” Bruce grinned as he joined Natasha on the couch, and set two glasses of water on the table.  
        “Figured you drink about as much alcohol as I do,” Bruce commented as Natasha thanked him and pulled up YouTube.  
        “Honestly, I’m surprised you found water back there.”  
        An initial search of ‘tony stark 2009’ yielded much more than they wanted to see, so Natasha worked on collecting old event websites while Bruce had the idea of calling Pepper up and asking her for Tony’s backlogged schedule, and eventually the two of them were engrossed in videos of their teammate publicly embarrassing himself to varying degrees.

        “Look, he’s barely standing,” Bruce said with wonder some time later. “Look, the way he’s gripping the podium. He’s gone.”  
        “How the hell is he even getting words out,” Natasha murmured, shaking her head. Though it wasn’t in her nature to brag, she always had a secret pride in that she was able to hold her own when drinking with any collection of spies, mobsters, thugs, or superheroes she happened to find herself in a bar with, and even drink them under the table on occasion. But Stark seemed to be on an entirely different level, and not a sustainable one. Natasha was tempted to ask Bruce about the context of this bet, what made him come up with this idea and put this time of his life on display for his closest friend, but filed that away for another time.  
        “Not just words,” Bruce observed. “Sentences, even. Sentences on the limits of dexterous manipulation in wearable robotics. Jesus.”  
        “Okay, well, I’m going to go ahead and put another check in the ‘drunk as fuck’ column,” Natasha stated, putting her glass of water on the table as she studied her notepad that was decidedly weighted in tally marks on one side. “What’s the next one?” Bruce checked the playlist as Nat readjusted on the couch, pulling a pillow into her lap.  
        “Let’s see…oh, last one. The International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. I’m willing to admit I have no clue what any of that means.” Bruce began the video and Natasha rearranged herself back to join him at the edge of her seat. They watched for a moment in companionable silence, Natasha too focused on studying Tony to notice how much she was actually enjoying herself.  
        “He’s not slurring anything…yet,” she pointed out. “And I’m going to assume what he’s saying makes sense.” Bruce skipped to about halfway through the video, where their friend was looking noticeably more haggard.  
        “I have a feeling this is another win,” he commented, smiling and leaning in further. Natasha glanced at him, unable to help herself from reading the body language on both sides of the screen, and had to smile as well. “Listen to the audience, though,” he continued, “They’re not all being quiet. They’re talking amongst themselves. It sounds like he maybe said something they didn’t agree with.”  
        “Not bad,” Natasha said, looking at Bruce again, truly impressed. He only caught her eye for a moment, then put his head back down and shrugged noncommittally, pretending to still be engrossed in the video.  
        “We’ll give him another minute to redeem himself. Or to do something very stupid,” Natasha changed the subject back into comfortable territory.  
        “Hopefully the latter,” Bruce answered quickly. His eyes then widened, and Natasha drew her attention back to Stark.  
        “He just grabbed the podium again,” she confirmed, and Bruce nodded, excited.  
        “That’s a tell, that’s a tell,” he exclaimed, and Natasha laughed at his enthusiasm. He reached over her for the notepad and his arm caught her water glass. She saw it for only a second, time slowing as it fell to the floor and shattered. And she flinched. And that was a tell. They both stood up immediately, stepping carefully away from the broken glass.  
        “I’m sorry,” Banner muttered, his eyes downcast, busying himself with moving Nat’s laptop away from the pooling water. “I’ll clean this up.”  
        “No, I can,” Natasha said, darting to the back of the room partially in search of towels and partially to hide her shame, and partially to hide from his. “It’s not a problem, really.” Of course there were no towels. She faced the back wall, took a breath, and turned back around to Banner, who was standing in the doorway.  
        “I’ll run out, find some. There has to be a bathroom or a kitchen or something around here,” he offered, then disappeared. Natasha stayed in the back of the room, perfectly still and quiet, and gave herself one minute to beat herself up, to think the things about herself that were nothing but damaging and bitterly self-satisfying, not to demand more of herself but to accuse herself of being something less than she was. And then she breathed, and forced those thoughts aside, and went back to shut her laptop. She was stowing it carefully in its bag when Banner walked back in, just as she was not expecting him to. Natasha briefly considered that he may not have seen after all, but he held up his new hand towels and began to mop up the spill without making eye contact and of course he had seen.  
        “The computer’s fine,” she forced herself to say, “it’s just water, anyway.”  
        “Well, that’s a relief,” Bruce answered, smiling at Natasha’s outstretched hand as he gave her a towel. “I didn’t want to cause SHIELD any more property damage.”  
        “More importantly, the notepad’s fine, too. A little soggy around the edges but you can make out the tally marks just fine,” she continued, pretending Banner hadn’t made that last comment because apparently that was the kind of person she was now. She handed it to him, who narrowed his eyes as he counted up the columns and blew out a stream of air once finished. He glanced up at her with a ghost of a smile.  
        “Thanks, for this,” he said. It sounded genuine. “For the good conversation and, y’know, the free lunch.” He gathered up the towels and began to walk to the door. Natasha fiddled with the zipper on her laptop case as he did so, considering stalling until he had unequivocally left, but fought against that temptation.  
        “I’m,” she started. Banner turned around in the doorway. “Sorry,” she finished, catching his eye only momentarily before he broke away, looking down and smiling in such a way that made Natasha wonder if Bruce had made, and won, more than one bet that day.  
        “I get that a lot,” he replied, and shrugged before walking out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof. Can you tell I'm not the most prolific writer? Posting this as a promise that I haven't forgotten about this story. I'm sure the new movie (!!!) should give me plenty of inspiration to write a bit more consistently.


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